Undernews is the online report of the Progressive Review, edited by Sam Smith, who has covered Washington under nine presidents and edited alternative journals since 1964. The Review is an online journal and archive of alternative news. It has been on the web since 1995. See main page for full contents

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

MARINES INSISTING ON RIGHT TO RECRUITING ON CAMPUS

DON'T TASE ME BRO'The military wants names, birth dates, phone numbers and academic pursuits of college students that can be used to identify people with knowledge and interests that are particularly useful to the military and is ready to play hardball to get them, regardless of schools or students views on the subject. The Marine Times reports:

|||| The Defense Department has announced a new get-tough policy with colleges and universities that interfere with the work of military recruiters and Reserve Officer Training Corps programs. Under rules that will take effect April 28, defense officials said they want the exact same access to student directories that is provided to all other prospective employers. Students can opt out of having their information turned over to the military only if they opt out of having their information provided to all other recruiters, but schools cannot have policies that exclude only the military, defense officials said in a March 28 notice of the new policy in the Federal Register.||||

The new policy also no longer lets schools ban military recruiters from working on campuses solely because a school determines that no students have expressed interest in joining the military. If other employers are invited, the military has to have the same access. Federal funding can be cut off if colleges and universities do not give recruiters and ROTC programs campus access. While student financial assistance is not at risk, other federal aid, especially research funding, can disappear if a school does not cooperate.

The Pentagon can declare colleges or universities anti-ROTC if they prohibit or prevent a Senior ROTC program from being established, maintained or efficiently operated.

The Third amendment is not limited to dwellings, nor does it specify time of day. Unless the university is government owned, it is private or semiprivate property. All organizations, universities included, have a legal right to control who is on their property and how it is used except in the time of emergency or war.

Private schools can keep people off their property just as the government has the choice to determine which schools are eligible to receive funding. If you don't government agents on your property, then don't take government money.

Kudos to any university that will say no to government money, when that funding is abused for illegal spying, torture, wars based on lies, rigged elections, CIA mind control programs, and the rest of the heinous crimes the U.S. government commits in the name of th people.

Your editor has been a
musician for many decades. He started the first band his Quaker
school ever had and played drums with bands up until 1980 when
he switched to stride piano. He had his own band until the mid-1990s
and has played with the New Sunshine Jazz Band, Hill City Jazz
Band, Not So Modern Jazz Band and the Phoenix Jazz Band.

APEX BLUESSam
playing with the Phoenix Jazz Band at the Central Ohio Jazz festival
in 1990. Joining the band is George James on sax. James, then
84, had been a member of the Louis Armstrong and Fats Waller
orchestras and hadappeared on some 60 records.More
notes on James